Scuola Normale Superiore, Italy (SNS)

The Scuola Normale Superiore (SNS) is a public institute for higher education that in its two centuries of life has earned itself a special place, both in Italy and abroad, a place characterised by merit, talent and scientific rigour. It offers an undergraduate course and a PhD course. Its teaching activity is distributed among three academic structures: the Faculty of Humanities, the Faculty of Mathematical and Natural Sciences, placed in Pisa, and the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences, located in Palazzo Strozzi in Florence. The institutional aim of the Scuola is to promote the development of culture, teaching and research in the sciences and the humanities. This particular purpose is achieved by exploring the interconnections between these two areas.

Donatella Della Porta is Professor of Political science at the Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane (on leave of absence) and professor of Sociology in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute. She has directed the Demos project, devoted to the analysis of conceptions and practices of democracy in social movements in six European countries. She is now starting a major ERC project Mobilizing for Democracy, on civil society participation in democratization processes in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America. She is co-editor of the European Political Science Reviews (ECPR-Cambridge University Press. In 2011, she was the recipient of the Mattei Dogan Prize for distinguished achievements in the field of political sociology. Her main fields of research are social movements, the policing of public order, participatory democracy and political corruption. Among her very recent publications are: Mobilizing on the Extreme Right (with M. Caiani and C. Wagemann), Oxford University Press, 2012; Meeting Democracy (ed. With D. Rucht), Cambridge University Press, 2012; The Hidden Order of Corruption (with A. Vannucci), Ashgate 2012; Los movimientos sociales (with M. Diani), Madrid, CIS, 2011; Democrazie, Il Mulino, 2011; L’intervista qualitativa, Laterza 2011; (with M. Caiani), Social Movements and Europeanization, Oxford University Press, 2009; (ed.) Another Europe, Routledge, 2009; (ed.) Democracy in Social Movements, Palgrave, 2009; Approaches and Methodologies in the Social Sciences (with M. Keating), Cambridge University Press; (with Gianni Piazza), Voices from the Valley; Voices from the Streat Berghan, 2008; The Global Justice Movement, Paradigm, 2007; (with M. Andretta, L. Mosca and H. Reiter), Globalization from Below, The University of Minnesota Press; (with A. Peterson and H. Reiter), The policing transnational protest, Ashgate 2006; (with M. Diani), Social Movements: an introduction, 2nd edition, Blackwell, 2006; (with S. Tarrow), Transnational Protest and Global Activism, Rowman and Littlefield, 2005.

Alice Mattoni is a research fellow in the Centre for Social Movement Studies (COSMOS) at the European University Institute, working with the ANTICORRP research team. Before joining COSMOS, she has been a Postdoctoral Associate Fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh. Alice obtained her Master of Research and PhD in Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute. She is a co-convener of the standing group ‘Participation and Mobilization’ of the European Consortium of Political Research (ECPR) and a co-editor of ‘Interface, a journal for and about social movements’. Amongst her recent publications are Research in Social Movements, Conflict and Change:Advances in the visual analysis of social movements co-edited with Nicole Doerr and Simon Teune (Emerald, 2013); Mediation and Protest Movements co-edited with Bart Cammaerts and Patrick McCurdy (Intellect, 2013); Media Practices and Protest Politics. How Precarious Workers Mobilise (Ashgate, 2012); Alla Ricerca Dell’Onda. Nuovi Conflitti nell’Istruzione Superiore co-edited with Loris Caruso, Alberta Giorgi and Gianni Piazza (Franco Angeli, 2010). Research interests: precarious workers and their struggles; anti-corruption and organized crime protests; online political campaigning; qualitative research methods; digital research methods.

Salvatore Sberna is Research Fellow at the European University Institute and coordinator of the APC Master's Program on Analysis, Prevention and Control of Organised Crime and Corruption, organised by the Department of Political and Social Science, University of Pisa. He completed a Phd in Political Science at the Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane in Florence with a dissertation on the politics of organised crime, a quantitative and qualitative assessment of organised crime’s impact on local government in Italy. He was visiting researcher at the Ex-legi Institute, University of Oxford, and visiting Fulbright researcher at UCLA. His research on mafia’s violence during elections in Italy was presented at CEES (UCLA), Brookings Institution (Washington DC), St. Gallen (ECPR Joint Sessions), UC Berkeley. His publications include two articles in books or journals, and he is currently preparing a manuscript about organised crime and politics in Italy.

Alberto Vannucci took his Phd in Political Science at the Scuola Superiore di Studi Universitari e di Perfezionamento “S. Anna” of Pisa. He is Associate Professor of Political Science at the Department of Political Sciences of the University of Pisa (Italy). His main research interests are political and administrative corruption, illegal markets and organized crime, neo-institutional theory. Since 2010 he is director of the Master Programme in “Analysis, prevention and fight against organized crime and corruption”, organized by University of Pisa-Libera-Avviso Pubblico. Among his books: Corrupt exchanges (New York, 1999, with Donatella della Porta): Governare l'incertezza (Soveria Mannelli 2004), Lo spettro della competitività (Soveria Mannelli 2006, with R. Cubeddu), Mani impunite (Roma-Bari 2007, with D. della Porta), Nero, grigio,sommerso (Pisa 2009), The hidden order of corruption (Farnham 2012, with D. della Porta) and Atlante della corruzione (Torino 2012).